got a e35 GSN from a second hand shop for $30. they thought it was broken. (the timer was stuck, i fixed it in the shop and bought it) Yashica seems to be my brand of camera. my favorite is an FX3 super. been shooting with the e35 for a week. its been super enjoyable. the limitations are welcomed. fixed lens. unless lighting changes, pretty much only have to worry about the focus. the alignment was weird at first. wish the diamond was a liiiittle bit bigger. im glad you liked it too! im glad our experiences with it were reflected in our opinions! a damn fine camera.
That scratching of the coating on the rear element can be cleaned, in case you're annoyed about it. It's on the inner surface. Minolta 58 1.2 can be easily disassembled btw. I used lens pen+microfiber to clean it. Haven't noticed any more flaring after. CA only axial. Regarding lateral aberration there's almost 0 even wide open in most ugly situations (like tree branches against white cloudy sky). Hard to find decent, unbeaten cpoy though.
I own the Minolta Rokkor 58mm f1.2 and its slightly slower 58mm f1,4 sibling. I use the f1.4 lens much more often because it's lighter and produces basically the same results. I've been a photojournalist for 31 years and place a higher priority on a lighter overall kit. I use the f1.2 version almost exclusively for portraits in controlled situations, i.e. an outdoor shoot of a model. I enjoy your videos. Thank you for your impressive work.
I once longing for wider lens, be it 1.4 or 1.2 and dreaming of beautiful/creamy image it would give. But after seeing these sample images, and then realizing that today's camera sensor is more than enough to reveal all of these lens characteristic (and flaws) which seems excessive to my liking... Considering their price and my second though (do I REALLY need it?) I would have changed my mind and stick with what I already have - a bulk of various nifty fifty 1.8/2 glasses in my collection. These f1.8-2 range would give enough "creamy/dreamy" look, with adequate blurry background for me.😄
If only 1 lens.... my pick would be the MC Beroflex 28mm F2.8. On the APSc Canon M50 that works out to a 45mm focal length, or 31mm F2.0 with the speed booster. So, one lens, but two focal lengths with the mirrorless. With the speed booster I love it for video, and without boosting (as 45mm F2.8) it my favorite for street photography, general walk around. I love its colors! (Well, my main consideration was for photography of course, but I had to add that this lens is an absolute stunner for video and filming.)
The thorium series doesn’t involve any neutron decay so it shouldn’t be capable of making something else radioactive (dust inside the lens would be no problem unless that dust is actually a fragment of thoriated glass)
The zuiko 85mm f/2 was the weapon of choice of Jane Bown. I have both the 100mm and 135mm f/3.5, but would quite like that 85, though prices are a bit beyond what I can spare right now (about £350 as of 2024).
The odd blemish doesn’t mean a lens can’t perform well. I have an Auto Chinon 50mm f1.7 I bought as part of a job lot of 3 for spares. The foremost of the middle elements has serious coating breakdown - about 50 % of it is cloudy. It’s ugly to look at but that doesn’t seem to have any effect on image quality. I’ve tested it against my Pentax 50 f1.7 and Industar 50-2 f3.5 and it holds it’s own through all aperture settings.
I like what the Olympus can do. Still battling with my canon rf 50 1.2. A middle element keeps steaming up over the course of a fortnight. A wipe with lens cloth and its fine, but you gotta remove the lens block. Take the back element off to get the rear group out, then it can get its wipe. Will try some anti mist coating as used in motorcycle helmets and paintball goggles. Its a pink wax stick that requires some buffing. There is no water in the lens, iv taken it fully to bits and reassembled. Iris blades helicoid the lot. Cleaned with petrol fresh grease . Never seen anything like it,
That's very odd. Assuming it's not getting in from outside, it must be something in the lens causing this. Are you sure the liquid is water? Sometimes old lenses are lubricated incorrectly, using too much oil which can lie unnoticed, but which will migrate given enough time. On the other hand, if it's coming in from outside, could it be a storage problem? Perhaps try keeping some dessicant next to the lens when storing?
@@zenography7923 just checked in on it, steamed, always one surface of one element. I could attach a silica packet inside the caps. I leaning toward polymer degradation.
Love the end! We return to reality, i see it all the time on purchase sights/sites/you get me! 85mm is the best, its like flies to a ? There are many great lenses, as you display and the fact that it opens to these wide aperture’s means nothing,the point being,how many photographers need a lens that will shoot in low light? Sorry, Today, quality of the lens is far more important!
@@zenography7923 i understand that, im a collector of both cameras and lenses, i have over a hundred cameras and mote lenses, my point was, that there are many lenses out there that are not grabbed, and some are very good in surprising ways.
I think I can just about remember Ilford bringing XP1 film onto the market, which at the time was amazing as you could push it easily to a 1000 ASA, gel based rather than the usual silver nitrate, it really was something else, but that said there was always an edgy grainy photojournalism qualitty to pushing black and white way beyond its designated ASA.
I think XP1 was launched in about 1980. Bit before my time but I've heard XP2 was a big improvement. I was recently looking at some old photos I took in the late 90s on HP5 pushed to 800 or 1600. They have a very distinctive "sooty" look which for many subjects has a more appropriate feel and atmosphere than modern auto-HDR mega-sharp images.
My Porst Color Reflex UMC XMG 50/1.2, which is a rebadged Fujinon(old FA/X mount) EBC DM, seems to be a better choice. At or near MFD no 1.2 is going to be a sharpness monster, certainly not hand held, but for anything over 1m or so it is quite useable. Blur isn't superb but not too bad either and I've never seen a trace of CA so....... On the downside is the price, they are more rare than either the Minolta or the Olympus. I got lucky because not everybody knows what it is and sometimes it gets rejected just because the badge says Porst rather than Fuji.
A good Barnack Leica body - about £200. A good Zorki or Fed body - £50 to £100. A Leitz Elmar - about £150 to £200. A good Industar 22 - about £60. Hope that helps!
my nikon nikkor 55mm f/1.2 performs somewhat between these two, with the added nikkor color signature. just about sharp enough, interesting blur, good colors.
There were the regular 1.2 Nikkors of 50, 55 and 58mm and the specially corrected 1.2 "Noct" Nikkor... The price of the later 10x higher than the former.
I've been looking at adding a vintage f1.2 lens to my collection. I have a number of f1.4 lenses that I really love, but was thinking that an f1.2 would be even more amazing. After this video, I'm not so sure. The f1.2's seem exceptionally soft with boatloads of spherical aberrations. To be clear, my f1.4's all do as well, but not enough to make me stop using them, and indeed sometimes these effects are desirable for certain subjects... but the f1.2's are off the charts in this regard lol. So far I'm seeing a pattern with the f1.2's vs. the f1.4's: more expensive, heavier, worse image quality. Are there any other f1.2's to be considered?
The primary reason that we bought the f1.2 back in the day was because the films needed the speed. As films got better through the 70's and 80's, that became less of a necessity. Of course, if you are using it on a digital camera made in the last fifteen or twenty years, (rough guess, I'm not a digital guy) then an extra stop or two isn't going to matter. As to image quality, there's a saying "you get what you pay for." That was as true back in the day as it is today.
All the major manufacturers made an f1.2, but the nicest I've used is the Zuiko 50mm f1.2 (not 55mm). A truly stunning lens that's actually quite sharp wide open. As many have said though, these were available light lenses and aren't really needed today, but they sure are fun to play with! I consider them art lenses today, with which one can achieve a specific look that can't be made in any other way, so for me they still have a use.
Two Leica speed champs were a 65mm f/0.75 and a 50mm f/0.75 lens. Both appear to have been designed specifically for x-ray photography. (Leica Barnack Berek Blog)
The point with these lenses is that they would have primarily been used at maximum aperture in very low light, so anything other than the main subject would be very dark or completely black. This means the quality of the out of focus areas is irrelevant as it wouldn't be noticeable. If printed in a newspaper as little dots on low quality paper, or even slightly better quality in a magazine, these lenses would have been adequate for the print technologies of their era. edit: regarding CA, these lenses would probably have been used mostly with b&w film.
They were available light lenses, it's true, but they sure are fun to play with and they will give a look that can't be achieved with any other lens. In modern times I think they're best thought of as art lenses.
I'm just writing a magazine article about one of these! Fully agree with everything you've said, they're so nice to use and the results are great. It really does look nice as well!
You know, I thought digital was more "analog" back when you had digital SLRs. Back then, there were more mechanics inside the camera, and you looked through the lens rather than looking at a little screen. What is your own favorite digital SLR? How about that retro Nikon DSLR?
I go through this thinking myself, all the time. I had a Leica M4 and a Leica M246 - one analog and one digital. I definitely preferred taking photos with the M4, due to the more tactical feeling, but I have to say the photos from the M246 looked better. And of course digital does not required messing around with chemicals in the evening.
Those little Rebels are probably the best deals in film photography at present. I've been picking them up over the years as well as people giving them to me. I did get an Elan II this year for $20 which is fabulous, but they are a little heavier and not quite as much fun to plink away with.
Another great video, the mamiya is for an 35 mm slr , it would be interesting, if it could be adapted, mamiya glass had a great reputation back in the day
Initially FED cameras, as copies of Leika, were maiden by orphans in Kharkiv, Ukraine (in that time - USSR), in an orphanage named after Feliks Edmundvich Dzerzhinskiy (that is meaning of FED), led by famous educator Anton Makarenko. Those kids really put their soul on what they did.
There were several high quality 110 cameras, hie Canon110 ED being an example, The Pentax 110 SLR was another. I had a largely unknown Minox 110 of similar quality. It was initially designed to be the Leica 110 camera, but Leize bailed out before final production, so the makers (Balda, Germany) negotiated for Minox to brand the camera. The 110 format is about the same as the over-sized Minolta subminiature format, which was just too small to get a quality enlargement of any size. Regardless of camera quality, the film size basically limited these to casual snapshots of the kids at the beach for Grandma's photo album. The film speed indexing tops out at EI 400 because using a faster film with quality compromises is ridiculous. Frankly, the job of the 110 format is now done with far better quality for hugely less cost by my 14-year-old Canon Powershot digital camera, which is also smaller and more pocketable. 110 = dinosaur.
